About “Bram Stoker”

Bram Stoker

He was born Abraham Stoker in 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent then as now called The Crescent in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland His parents were Abraham Stoker and the feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker was the third of seven children Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Clontarf Church of Ireland parish and attended the parish church St John the Baptist located on Seafield Road West with their children, who were both baptised there.Stoker was an invalid until he started school at the age of seven when he made a complete and astounding recovery Of this time, Stoker wrote, I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years After his recovery, he became a normal young man, even excelling as an athlete he was named University Athlete at Trinity College, Dublin 1864 70 , from which he graduated with honours in mathematics He was auditor of the College Historical Society and president of the University Philosophical Society, where his first paper was on Sensationalism in Fiction and Society.In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non fiction book The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879 and theatre reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J Sheridan Le Fanu His interest in theatre led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving He also wrote stories, and in 1872 The Crystal Cup was published by the London Society, followed by The Chain of Destiny in four parts in The Shamrock.In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager at first as acting manager of Irving s Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London s high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle In the course of Irving s tours, Stoker got the chance to travel around the world.The Stokers had one son, Irving Noel, who was born on December 31, 1879.Bram Stoker died in 1912, and was cremated and his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders Green Crematorium After Irving Noel Stoker s death in 1961, his ashes were added to that urn The original plan had been to keep his parents ashes together, but after Florence Stoker s death her ashes were scattered at the Gardens of Rest.See also enpedia wiki Bram_Stoker

546 thoughts on “Dracula's Guest”

This is not actually a sequel to Dracula but a collection of short stories by Stoker I ve written a couple of lines about each of them.Dracula s Guest This is part of the original Dracula which was cut to reduce the length It has very little to do with Dracula the character and the book and is a bit of an odd story really That being said they are so very creepy moments in it The Judge s House A haunted house story which is absolutely fantastic It s chilling The Squaw A particularly gruesome stor [...]

I thought this collection was just okay I enjoyed the story The Judge s House the most A good rat story is always fun I was a bit disappointed in this collection I m a big fan of Dracula and I guess I just expected .

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone was a great iron spike or stake On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters The dead travel fast.

I had never heard of this book before, but when I ran across it and saw who the author was, I snatched it up and started reading What we have here is a series of short stories published by Mrs Stoker after the passing of her husband The stories range from the disturbing supernatural tale of The Judge to the vampiric title tale of Dracula s Guest some versions of this book include the Lair of the White Worm which although it is not one of my favorite of Mr Stoker s Cannon, it is still a very cree [...]

This is a collection of short stories published by Stoker s wife after his death.Though a prolific writer in his own right, Stoker really only had one commercially successful book, his revered classic Dracula So it s no surprise that the first story in this collection, Dracula s Guest, was also chosen as the anthology s title Note however, that the other stories, while in the horror Gothic tale genre, are not Dracula vampire stories.As is the case with many short story collections, there are sto [...]

A short story way better than the Dracula novel, sometimes included as a first chapter of Dracula though this was, probably, Stoker s intent, it was also, probably, intended, in fact, for an earlier Dracula version, quite different from the one we know the style is quite different, and the tale stays better on its own as Dracula s first chapter, it makes little sense and it doest not connect well with the rest of the story.

Dracula s Guest by Bram StokerPublished posthumously by his wifeBegan September 15, Completed September 25Did not read all the storiesHorror Readers, September 22, 2014, DiscussionThis book consists of unpublished stories written prior to Bram Stoker s death After he passed to eternal life, his wife decided to publish these stories I m not sure why this was done, but in general I tend to think that if an writer wanted something published he would have done it Apparently most of these stories had [...]

I must confess that I thought this was a sequel to Dracula It s not Dracula s Guest is a compilation of short horror stories by Bram Stoker published posthumously by his wife It s quite decent and it reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe at times The Judge s House, A Gypsy Prophecy and A Dream of Red Hands are my favourite stories Good for rainy nights.

A classic indeed Not as good as Dracula Though But I always love a classic one These short horror stories are much much better than the modern ones I have read The writes in the 18th and 19th century were dark and gothic I reckon Reading such books always gives you a quaint feeling A feeling as if you are not holding a classic novel or a book but a relic in your hands.

I have always loved the book Dracula although there are parts of it that drag In my opinion Bram Stoker was made to write short stories like the ones in Dracula s Guest The first one is a piece that was taken from the original manuscript of Dracula for the time constraints of the novel The others are just pieces from Bram Stoker s mind They are rather macabre but extremely enjoyable if you have a darker side Read this, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ray Bradbury for the best October of your life.

Once again, some mystery is left open Jonathan has decided to go back to the mountains in Romania discovering that the unholy village there, where count Dracula s Castle lies is forbidden The count in the previous story has left no trace, only tombs were bolted, as they made sure it happened, after they decided to get back What s the story of the school there in the Romanian mountain I need to know

Creepy imagery, but much ado about nothing A wolf appears three quarters of the way into the story, but this is also a non event The scariest things in this tale are the wind, trees and a lone sepulchre Again, well written, but no goal.

Anything refereing to Dracula freezes the blood in my vains, this wasn t really creepy but when he starts describing the atmosphere in the cemetery and the telegram recieved at the hotel, bad souvenirs from Dracula rose and this alone scared the hell outta me

3.5 starsOverall, I only really liked two stories from this collection Dracula s Guest and The Gypsy Prophecy.Dracula s Guest 5 starsThis one was actually quite good, and downright creepy Made all the so by the dramatic reading audio I listened to as it had sound effects to add to the atmosphere of the reading and a very good narrator I kind of wish the real Dracula book had been written this way I think I would have enjoyed it a lot than I did Rather than it being in letter journal form, this [...]

When you say Bram Stoker you hear Dracula It is a bit surprising then, that the earlier short stories by Stoker show only little of the defining works superb qualities Far from poor, it is not really whole heartedly recommended either The title story was apparently excised from the novel Dracula It s a great mood setter tale, but does not stand up so well on it s own and considering the length of Dracula , one wonders what was the point in cutting these few pages The rest are older short stories [...]

This book consists of one chapter that was edited out of Dracula, followed by a really rather random collection of short stories with two common denominators they all have something of the mysterious about them, and they are all easily forgettable The title of the book is misleading not only itself, but also in terms of the contents as a whole Dracula doesn t actually feature in the story that lends the book its name although a note is received from him , and Dracula s Guest, i.e Jonathan Harker [...]

I did enjoy the book in general, some of the stories were even really good to read However, a big part of the book was a little too obvious and trashy And maybe Bram Stoker needs to be a little trashy but thinking about Dracula, I was rather disappointed with these stories The writing style in here is far from his masterpiece I should mention though, that the author unfortunately wasn t able to revise these stories as they could not have been published during his life time.

Very much a fan of Stoker s Dracula, but The Judge s House aside, I found this collection to be consistently drab flooded with long descriptive passages and sluggish exposition Had the author not been responsible for a book I look upon fondly, I am certain that I would have given up long before the end On reflection, I should have done so regardless.

Many years ago, I began Dracula, but did not finish it The degree to which I enjoyed this short story, excised from the main text and published posthumously, encourages me to give the full book a second try It is beautiful in language and atmosphere, enough so that I feel I can forgive the simplistic Dracula ex machina conclusion.